The Australian Cricket Board yesterday paraded two of its greatest stars like shot-down enemy pilots in an attempt to prove they were at last telling the truth about the bribery scandal that is in danger of throttling the international game.

Shane Warne, currently out of the Australian team through injury, flew 500 miles to the Adelaide Oval, scene of tomorrow's third Test against England, to read a one-minute statement.

He was wearing a defendant-style dark woollen suit on a day of 95 F heat. Mark Waugh joined him in conventional cricket gear. Both admitted having taken money from an illegal Indian bookmaker for providing what they called routine information about weather, pitches and team, less than they habitually told the media in pre-match interviews. They described themselves as "naive and stupid".

Warne and Waugh said all this to the Australian board four years ago and were duly punished then. Waugh took $6,000 and was fined $10,000; Warne's pay-off was $1,000 less, and his fine $2,000 less.

It is easy to understand why sportsmen might be stupid enough to take cash for providing apparently innocuous information. "Where's the harm?" they obviously thought. It is also easy to sense that the bookmaker had bigger plans for them in the long run than merely asking whether it might rain or not. This is how the Russians used to draw spies into their web.

It is less easy to see why on earth the board persisted in a four-year cover-up, even though a couple of journalists have asked time and again whether this rumour was true or not. Malcolm Speed, the chief executive, said yesterday: "Australian cricket and the ACB have a very high reputation. This does nothing to improve that reputation. With hindsight a different approach might have been taken."

The senior officials who instigated the cover-up have now gone. Speed came into office only two years ago when his predecessor, Graham Halbish, had his contract terminated with extreme prejudice. Alan Crompton, the board chairman when the fines were imposed, has since been voted out of office. A short statement from Crompton was read yesterday in which he described the issue as "an internal disciplinary action". It is understood that the decision was not merely kept private; it was not even minuted.

The International Cricket Council's chief executive David Richards was told, though one source says this was because Richards was passing through Australia at the time, rather than out of a spirit of openness.

Everyone agreed there was no evidence that Waugh and Warne were ever involved in throwing matches; England might be relieved if they did refuse to try now and again. But this whole sensation - which knocked a major cyclone in the Northern Territory off the front pages - has reawakened concerns about the whole betting-and-bribes scandal. There is compelling evidence that some of the squillions of one-day internationals played by sub-continental teams every year have been fixed, at the behest of bookmakers.

The judge in Lahore who has been investigating this issue is due to report shortly and his conclusions will go to the ICC's scheduled meeting next month. Richards has promised the council will then consider action and will take powers to impose indefinite bans on individuals. This follows four years of evasiveness and pusillanimity from all the game's leaders.

Warne and Waugh - along with Tim May - were the players allegedly approached by the former Pakistani captain Salim Malik with an offer to throw a match against Pakistan in 1994. Salim's first reaction yesterday was to threaten an extremely belated action for libel. Others might theorise that, if Warne and Waugh were approached, they may not have been selected at random.

This admission has already cost Australian officials the moral authority they apparently held since this matter first came to public attention. Cricket has tried to pretend this is an internal Pakistani matter. This has been an outrage all along. The matches involved are international. There is almost certainly an Indian dimension; that is where most of the bookmakers are based. No one can yet say how many other countries might be involved because the game has consistently refused to set up any kind of investigation.

England are perhaps the country least likely to be implicated, mainly because they have participated least in the endless carousel of one-day internationals - though some might say England can chuck away matches without being bribed.

Speed said yesterday he believed everything the ACB knew about the whole issue was now in the public domain. This may come back to haunt him if there are further revelations.

The Waugh-Warne affair will have completed its half-life by tomorrow morning, when the Test starts. But the media frenzy that erupted in Australia yesterday will make it much harder for the ICC to prevaricate yet again next month.

Time is running out for cricket to frame a mature response to a crisis that threatens the game's good name like nothing else since Bodyline. Sports like racing, which are used to betting, know that tight controls are crucial to prevent betting-linked corruption.